Glossary
Survey Researcher Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential survey researcher terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key survey researcher vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in survey researcher training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- AAPOR
- Survey research professional group.
- Cognitive interview
- Testing how people understand questions.
- Cross-tab
- Results broken by group.
- Double-barreled question
- Asks two things at once.
- Leading question
- Question that pushes an answer.
- Likert scale
- Agree-disagree scale.
- Margin of error
- Range of uncertainty.
- Nonresponse bias
- Bias from who doesn’t answer.
- Panel
- Group surveyed repeatedly.
- Population
- Group you want to know about.
- Pretest
- Trial run of a survey.
- Random sample
- Everyone has a chance.
- Response rate
- Share who answer.
- Sample
- Group surveyed.
- Weighting
- Adjusting to match the population.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Survey Researcher practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Survey Researcher training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.